Google to index Android apps like websites, show them in mobile search results

In an interesting move, Google has announced that it plans to start deep-indexing Android applications and will show the relevant results in its mobile searches.

“We’re happy to announce a new capability of Google Search, called app indexing, that uses the expertise of webmasters to help create a seamless user experience across websites and mobile apps,” Google noted in a blog post.

“Just like it crawls and indexes websites, Googlebot can now index content in your Android app. Webmasters will be able to indicate which app content you’d like Google to index in the same way you do for webpages today — through your existing Sitemap file and through Webmaster Tools,” Google added.

How does this work?

“Let’s say that a user is searching for a movie. With app indexing, Google will begin to include deep links to apps in Android search results. When the user taps on the “Open in app” deep links, the app opens up directly to the movie in question,” Google explained in a blog post on Android Developers blog.

Google is currently testing the app indexing with a small group of developers like Expedia, IMDB, Wikipedia and Flixter and results from these apps will start to appear in Google search results on Android, in the US, in a few weeks.